More than a basketball story
In America, we often forget that the range the NBA reaches goes far past the bleachers of the arena that the teams play in. Basketball is a sport that is now global, as kids living in third-world countries have now found knowledge and access to knowledge about greats like LeBron James and Steph Curry.
This is the message at the backdrop of Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, Amazon’s new sports documentary about one of the biggest faces of the game right now, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The NBA star, known as the Greek Freak, has become one of the greatest power forwards to ever play the game. He’s an NBA Champion now, winning for the Milwaukee Bucks, but the story that got him there has been glossed over in the media, and with Giannis: The Marvelous Journey, it goes deeper.
Giannis was born in Nigeria, but his family quickly immigrated to Greece around the new millennium with his brothers. The focal point of Giannis: The Marvelous Journey is clearly Giannis, but we definitely see that the Antetokounmpos are a strong family that stuck together through the hardships of life.
Greece was a very tense place to live during the time of the family’s immigration to the country. A collapsed economy and racial tension made a Nigerian family live in very poor circumstances and in fear.
The story the brothers tell in the first act of the film is all four of them walking home at night. Giannis tells one of his younger brothers to run real fast with him, so the group all runs, then stops and walks for a bit, and then he tests them again by running for another few minutes. In the long run, what Giannis was doing was trying to run through neighborhoods where they might get attacked.
As in life, you take the scary moments with the motivating moments of beauty and glee, as the brothers would go to the internet cafe in Athens to watch NBA highlights online. This was years before Web 2.0 happened, so the bandwidth has been atrocious, but it was here that Giannis learned what his calling was.
The documentary, directed by Emmy Award-winning ESPN producer Kristen Lappas, gives us a little of what we already heard about Giannis Antetokounmpo’s story. A player who came from nothing had made so much noise during the early 2010s that it was heard by scouts and the GM of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Lappas does an incredible job at making the documentary more than just about the sport, but about what really matters in all this. Giannis is known for his dominant prowess on the court. His growth over the last decade, from having a humble start in the NBA to competing against the best in the game to now being one of the best in the game, is, as the title of the movie calls it, a marvelous journey to go on.
Yet, Giannis: The Marvelous Journey remains grounded due to its subjects. The Antetokounmpo family all look out for one another, and Giannis knows all of this can go away in a heartbeat, so his work ethic is unmatched. The NBA is a cash machine, loaded with players who try to double off moguls; some of that is polarizing to some, while others are intrigued by it.
Giannis just wants to play ball; he is a chip off a different kind of block. Of course, many NBA players come from poor families in America, but his views on what he needs to do with his success vary from those of other American-born players. It’s a beautiful thing to see as we see a shift of many European players starting to move to the forefront of the NBA.
Feel free to check out more of our movie reviews here!
-
Verdict - 8/10
8/10